version 1.1.0 - the MCH Release

Special Note This release cannot make use of older databases. The workaround is to start the CMA one time with the –cleandb flag, and restart all your nanoprobes. Sorry about that. This release is named after my Father-in-law - whose 94th birthday was 1 November 2015. Happy Birthday!

Caveats

Documentation has not been updated to reflect move to github. No doubt other shortcomings exist as well. Sorry! Please fix and generate a pull request.

No alerting, or interface to existing alerting (hooks to build your own interface are included)

high availability option for the CMA is roll-your-own using Pacemaker or similar

queries could benefit from more indexes for larger installations.

The CMA will suffer performance problems when discovering IP addresses when large numbers of nanoprobes are on a subnet.

no GUI

use with recent versions of Neo4j requires disabling authentication on Neo4j

performance with Neo4j is poor. Strangely, it's not a scalability problem. Fixes will be in a future release.

Best practices alerts currently only come out in syslog - not as events. Sorry!

Our current process only allows us to distribute 64-bit binaries. Feel free to build 32-bit binaries yourself. They still work for Ubuntu, and probably Debian and 7.0 and later versions of CentOS.

The magic installer can't install CMAs onto Fedora.

version 1.0 - the "Independence Day" release - 4 July 2015

This release provides a number of new features, and a number of bug fixes. This release is eminently suitable for deployments in environments where the caveats are acceptable. We have quite a few pre-built Ubuntu packages, and a few CentOS/RHEL packages for this version in the 1.0 subdirectory of http://bit.ly/assimreleases. A tar ball for this version can be found here: http://hg.linux-ha.org/assimilation/archive/v1.0.tar.gz

Caveats

No alerting, or interface to existing alerting (hooks to build your own interface are included)

high availability option for the CMA is roll-your-own using Pacemaker or similar

queries could benefit from more indexes for larger installations.

The CMA may suffer performance problems when discovering IP addresses when large numbers of nanoprobes are on a subnet.

no GUI

use with recent versions of Neo4j requires disabling authentication on Neo4j

version 0.5 - the "Valentine's day" release - 14 February 2015

This is release is sixth in a series of releases intended to culminate in an awesomely useful release. It is primarily a bug fix release. This release is eminently suitable for deployments in environments where the caveats are acceptable. We have quite a few pre-built Ubuntu packages, and a few CentOS/RHEL packages for this version in the 0.5 subdirectory of http://bit.ly/assimreleases. A tar ball for this version can be found here: http://hg.linux-ha.org/assimilation/archive/v0.5.tar.gz

New Features

We now produce Docker images for several versions of Linux, suitable for doing demos, testing, and learning about the software.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug where command line (assimcli) queries sometimes failed due to interactions with Linux security modules

Fixed a longstanding-but-previously-unknown bugs where it didn't like floating point numbers or negative integers in JSON

Caveats

No alerting, or interface to existing alerting (hooks to build your own interface are included)

high availability option for the CMA is roll-your-own using Pacemaker or similar

the queries need to have more indexes for larger installations.

The CMA may suffer performance problems when discovering IP addresses when large numbers of nanoprobes are on a subnet.

no GUI

version 0.1.5 - the 'secure communications' release - 29 January 2015

This is the fifth in a series of releases intended to culminate in an awesomely useful release. This release is eminently suitable for actual deployments in an environment where the caveats are acceptable. We have quite a few pre-built Ubuntu packages, and a few CentOS/RHEL packages for this version in the 0.1.5 subdirectory of http://bit.ly/assimreleases . A tar ball for this version can be found here: http://hg.linux-ha.org/assimilation/archive/v0.1.5.tar.gz

New Features

Encrypted Communication. Communication between the CMA and nanoprobes are now strongly encrypted using curve25519.

Added genkeys option to assimcli

Added new queries to assimcli

Added discovery of /proc/sys data

Added feature for debugging in the field (circular FSA buffer)

Increased kernel buffering for the CMA

Improved system testing code

Improved scrubbing of network packets

Improved diagnostics on startup failures

Added the ability to take core dumps to the CMA and nanoprobe init scripts

Bug Fixes

Caveats

No alerting, or interface to existing alerting (hooks to build your own interface are included)

high availability option for the CMA is roll-your-own using Pacemaker or similar

the queries need to have more indexes for larger installations.

The CMA may suffer performance problems when discovering IP addresses when large numbers of nanoprobes are on a subnet.

no GUI

version 0.1.4 - the 'much better tested' release - 20 October 2014

This is the fourth in a series of releases intended to culminate in a truly useful release. This release is eminently suitable for trials in an environment where the caveats are acceptable. We have quite a few pre-built Ubuntu packages, and a few CentOS/RHEL packages for this version in the 0.1.4 subdirectory of http://bit.ly/assimreleases . A tar ball for this version can be found here: http://hg.linux-ha.org/assimilation/archive/v0.1.4.tar.gz

A complete and detailed view of the features, bugs, caveats and so on for the Assimilation Project is currently held on on Trello. The lists of special interest are the In release 0.4 list and the various other bug and caveat lists in this board.

Features

100+ system System-level testing environment now part of development process

We now create several CentOS packages in our official build environment

added Flask code to support the creation of a JavaScript User Interface

Added Query objects in support of the Flask code.

Added the ability for for the Flask code to invoke Query objects and get results

significant internal improvements in Neo4j access

allow parsing of MAC addresses - they're now all in XX-YY-ZZ (etc) format.

Added transactions for the database and the network

removed "Monitoring" from the project name (but not from its capabilities)

Bug Fixes

check to make sure requested discovery scripts are present before executing them

much improved tcp service discovery

fixed a number of 64-bit-only assumptions in the code and tests

improved compatibility with old versions of Ubuntu

All graph node creation now checks to see if it already exists - avoiding accumulating superfluous objects

lots of other bugs associated with new features ;-)

Caveats

The CMA has a known slowish memory leak. It'll still take it a long time to grow larger than a small Java program ;-) More importantly, it is very unlikely to happen at all in a production system.

You will have to recreate your Neo4j database from scratch to convert to this release.

Object deletion not yet reliable or complete

No alerting, or interface to alerting (hooks to build your own interface are included)

communication is neither authenticated nor private

heterogeneous system support (POSIX and Windows)

statistical data collection

CDP support for Cisco switch discovery

high availability option for the CMA

Features that are expected for a monitoring solution but are not included include these:

useful alerting (but you can probably integrate your own)

heterogeneous system support (POSIX and Windows)

statistical data collection Note that these features are understood to be important and are planned - but this first release does not include them.

version 0.1.0 - the 'toy' release - 19 March 2013

The very first release of the Assimilation Monitoring Project - here at last! The purpose of this Linux-only release is to get the code from this revolutionary new architecture out there and get it in people's hands so that they can evaluate the concepts, provide feedback, and find bugs. It is highly recommended that you read the Getting Started - Installation and Configuration documentation.

Features

easily extensible discovery mechanism

Neo4J graph database documenting the data center configuration

fully distributed, extremely lightweight, reliable monitoring

no configuration needed for most environments - very simple configuration for all environments.

basic host monitoring

continuous, integrated stealth discovery of these kinds of information:

Source code known to compile on Windows systems (will eventually run there too).

Features that are expected for a monitoring solution but are not included include these:

meaningful alerting

service monitoring

heterogeneous system support (POSIX and Windows)

statistical data collection

CDP support for switch discovery

high availability option for the CMA

Note that these features are understood to be important and are planned - but this first release does not include them.

Bug Fixes

Since this is the first release, you could consider everything a bug fix - or nothing – take your pick.

Caveats

This is the very first baby release of the project - nicknamed the toy release for a reason. Although the code looks very stable for a release of this nature, and is unlikely to consume vast quantities of resources or crash your machines - it has never seen real field action before - and such results are not out of the realm of possibility for any software - much less for software so new as this release.

It is recommended that you deploy this release on test machines until sufficient feedback has been received to determine how it plays out in the field.

Other more mundane caveats:

efficiency - the code is currently wildly inefficient compared to what it should be to achieve its scalability goals There are many known issues in this area.

service discovery duplication

no doubt many others which are not known, or have been forgotten about

CMA restart might lose data from nanoprobes for discovery or system outages

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